Pillai
surname · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/pɪlaɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Pillai is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country, where it is the 19th most common surname. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from Malayalam പിള്ള (piḷḷa, “royal child; prince”).
- MYMalaysia≈1 in 8K(inferred from the name graph)
- SGSingapore≈1 in 8.4K
- INIndia1 in 29K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Pillai itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- 5 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 281 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 2.5K (inferred from the name graph)
≈110,000 named Pillay, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United Arab Emirates, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Pillay in ZA South Africa, GY Guyana.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Borrowed from Malayalam പിള്ള (piḷḷa, “royal child; prince”).
Sources 2
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested across 2 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Pillai counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | #19 | ≈110,000 est. | ≈1 in 520 | listed | Pillay | 152 |
| IN India | #580 | 45,738 | 1 in 29K | 46K | Pillai | 234 |
| ID Indonesia | — | ≈8,500 est. | ≈1 in 31K | — | Pillai | 16 |
| MY Malaysia | #345 | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 8K | — | Pillai | 65 |
| AE United Arab Emirates | #685 | ≈4,100 est. | ≈1 in 2.5K | — | Pillai | 31 |
| SG Singapore | #322 | ≈740 est. | ≈1 in 8.4K | — | Pillai | 80 |
| GY Guyana | #825 | 103as Pillay | 1 in 7.3K | 103 | Pillay | 4 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Pillai is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
Tamil honorific title; variant of Pillay.
as a wordsanames.co.za — South African surnames
In French, first-person singular past historic of piller
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, dative feminine singular of pills
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Ananda Ranga Pillaib. 1709INIndian diarist (1709-1761)
- V. O. Chidambaram Pillaib. 1872INIndian freedom fighter, lawyer, entrepreneur and writer (1872–1936)
- Chempakaraman Pillaib. 1891INIndian revolutionary (1891-1934)
- K. C. Sreedharan Pillaib. 1920USIndian-American mathematician
- Stephen Antony Pillaib. 1952ITRoman Catholic bishop
- Vidya Pillaib. 1977INIndian snooker player
- Prashant Pillaib. 1981INIndian composer
- Simone Ashleyb. 1995GBnot in their usual nameBritish actress
- Ashwathi Pillaib. 2000INbadminton player
- Ranj PillaiCACanadian politician
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 32 sources across 18 countries.
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Cognomix.it (Nomix s.r.l.) — Italian surname origin dictionary
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Pillai mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from Malayalam പിള്ള (piḷḷa, “royal child; prince”). Recorded by The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and Wiktionary.
- How do you pronounce Pillai?
- A machine transcription gives /pɪlaɪ/ (IPA) for Hindi.
- In which country does Pillai have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 109 thousand people named Pillay in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold.
- How common is the name Pillai?
- In India, the national register counted 45,738 people named Pillai, about 1 in 29 thousand residents.
- How common is Pillai compared with other names?
- In South Africa, Pillai is the 19th most common surname of 285,788 surnames recorded there.
What do you want to know about Pillai?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/pillaiThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Pillai” — the 19th most common surname in South Africa. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.